Zeta Experiment at Javasti

5/29/26 View from Cafe Javasti, Maple Leaf neighborhood

After our one day of summer when temps were in the high 70s and even low 80s in some parts, we were back to winter the following day. After a walk, I felt warm enough to get a table outside Café Javasti, where these conifers gave me an ideal opportunity for an experiment.

From experiences long ago, I had dismissed Stillman & Birn's Zeta sketchbook from use with wet media. While its smooth surface is beautiful with ink, markers and especially Derwent Drawing pencils, it’s just not sized appropriately for washes or generous spritzing. I’ve used water-soluble pencils with Zeta before, but it had been a while, and I wanted to refresh my memory on that combo. Trees like these are an ideal subject because I want to retain the detail of their distinctive, feathery limbs, which is more difficult to do with a toothy paper like Hahnemühle.

I like this result: A little water deepened the colors without obscuring the details, and it was dry enough for the Zeta surface to take it.

Jimi Hendrix Park by Rail

 

5/27/26 Jimi Hendrix Park

I don’t get around to Jimi Hendrix Park often (the last time was two years ago); the sometimes grueling drive through the worst of traffic has only gotten worse. Since the latest stations in our light rail system opened in March, though, the park is now an easy train ride away!

Roy hadn’t yet ridden the Eastside line across Lake Washington, so Mary Jean and I decided he should experience it. After riding one stop to Mercer Island, we turned right back around and rode to Judkins Park Station, which is across the street from both adjacent parks.

On this brilliant, nearly cloudless morning, temps in the mid-60s, I was able to stand in full sunlight to sketch the prominent red sculpture in the middle of the park. Before writing this post, I had checked my blog from my first visit to Hendrix Park in 2017, and I had to laugh – a composition I had chosen then was almost identical to this one! I had even chosen the same quotation from the purple trail of song lyrics circling the park. My approach hadn’t changed much in nine years, either, but at least I could tell that some trees had grown.

Part of a sculpture honoring Jimi Hendrix's life

Filling a few minutes before meeting up again with MJ and Roy, I sketched the cutout silhouette of Jimi in the sculpture honoring his life (at right).

After lunch at Seattle Fish Guys, we made a nearby stop that had been on our radar: Temple Pastries. With delicious treats and good coffee, the café has one more appealing feature: Outdoor seating with a view of the Central District neighborhood.

That’s where I made my first page-spread sketch journal entry in my handmade UglyPads sketchbook. Although I like the striking appearance of two high-contrast colors as adjacent pages, the spread looks less cohesive – the two pages don’t “read” like they are part of the same entry. I think I’d like to draw more across the gutter to bring the pages together better. I do appreciate the slightly larger page spread, though, compared to commercially bound Uglybooks.

Temple Pastries, Central District neighborhood

Maybe in the next book I make, I’ll stack a few sheets of the same color so I’ll have some same-color page spreads. Hmmm . . . so many options when you bind your own!

Animal Heads and a Surprise at Sculpture Park

 

5/30/26 Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, Olympic Sculpture Park

After a long delay and much anticipation, Ai Weiwei’s monumental installation, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, officially opened at a community event May 30 at Olympic Sculpture Park. According to the Seattle Art Museum, “The works reconceive the 12 zodiac heads that decorated an 18th-century Qing imperial fountain before they were looted during the Second Opium War (1856–60). Seven are based on the original heads that have survived, and Ai researched and reimagined the five animals still missing to complete the zodiac.”

Lunch sketches

Despite the cool, cloudy morning, USk Seattle came out in full force to sketch the bronze animal heads, each standing 10 feet tall and weighing 1,500 pounds. I sketched different parts of it twice from different angles. Then later while eating lunch outside, I still had a good view of the sculptures, so I sketched a few more heads, this time with Jane in the composition.

Sponsored by SAM, the community event included live music and dragon dance performances by Wei Dai. The page below is a composite of Dai’s performance (lower right) and park visitors playing with long, colorful dragon streamers similar to the one Dai used.

Dragon dancer Wei Dai (lower right) and park visitors 

After lunch, I still had an hour before the throwdown, so I took a walk down to the waterfront. To my surprise, while I’d seen the fountain before, I discovered a figure in the fountain that I had never noticed. Not finding a placard, I had to do some online digging to learn about it, and it turned out to be an intriguing story:

Father and Son, a fountain with sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, was the result of a bequest to the city by a Seattle man, Stu Smailes. The avid art supporter stipulated in his will that the $1 million gift be used to build a fountain in Seattle. “The fountain(s) shall include one or more unclothed, life-size male figure(s) designed in the classical style, i.e.: realistic,” were the requirements, according to the Seattle Times.

Father and Son by Louise Bourgeois 

Eventually, the bequest was assigned to Seattle Art Museum, and Father and Son was installed at the western park entrance in 2005. According to Wikipedia, “The 15-foot fountain and sculpture depict a na    ked man and a naked boy reaching out to each other. At timed intervals, two separate sides of the fountain will either rise or fall to reveal or obscure one figure or the other.” Interestingly, I never saw the “son” appear the whole time I was sketching, and the water level didn’t seem to change.

The Wikipedia article goes on to say that “Father and Son is the first public sculpture in Seattle featuring nude figures. While the SAM’s statement on the artwork focuses on the emotional distance and vulnerability of the two figures, others in the local community saw the sculptures as overtly sexual and pedophilic.” I don’t recall any of this controversy from 2005 – and it took me more than 20 years to discover the figure!

One of many benefits of being an urban sketcher is all that I keep learning about my native city, one sketch at a time.

Colored Pencils with Woodward

 

5/26/26 Derwent Drawing pencils in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (Colin Woodward's colored pencil workshop)

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been enjoying bingeing on Colin Woodward’s relaxing YouTubes that are part travelogue (with drone videography), part camper van life, and part sketching demos. Although he mostly uses watercolors and water-soluble pencils and crayons, I viewed one demo in which he used non-soluble colored pencils. When he offered a 90-minute mini-workshop on this medium, I knew it would be a good opportunity to ask questions and learn from him live on Zoom.

Almost all his demos, from both reference photos and plein air, are of northern Irish landscapes that are completely foreign to me. Trees, especially, seem like airy, formless hazes of foliage – so different from the strong, sculptural shapes of Pacific Northwest conifers. Regardless of medium, I knew the subject matter would be challenging.

Since Woodward didn’t specify a pencil brand, I decided to use only Derwent Drawing pencils. I know from his videos that he likes to use lots and lots of colors – a far wider range than I would typically use in the limited-palette fashion I tend to favor. He has a sharp eye for seeing tiny bits of color in his subjects that I don’t notice until he calls them out with a fistful of materials, often including some unexpected hues. I even wondered if the muted, nature-based Drawing palette would be too limited for his methods and whatever landscape he chose, so I wanted to put that to the test.

Look at all the colors in this sketch -- way more than I would typically use! But I did need some of them just to mix hues that I found lacking in the Derwent Drawing line.

Indeed, that was my first challenge: None of the greens in the Drawing line were warm enough for the greens I saw in the reference image (a field of bluebells in Killynether woods). It was a good challenge to use the Drawing palette’s inadequate yellows (two are quite similar, and both are warm) to warm up the greens.

This formless mass of "stuff" is the kind of scene I usually run from!
(Reference photo by Colin Woodward) 

In addition, this type of composition, which he tends to favor, is also foreign to me: With no central focal point other than the varying angles of distant trunks, the picture is more about capturing a mass of “stuff” than identifiable forms – the kind of view I usually run away from because it’s so . . . so formless!

The colored pencil Woodward uses most in his demos is Derwent Inktense, which, as we all know, explodes with vibrant, saturated hues with just a drop of water. It’s not difficult to get high contrasts and deep, dark values with those pencils quickly. That made me especially interested in seeing how he would use non-soluble pencils when he couldn’t rely on water to bring out their vibrancy. (I wasn’t the only one with this interest; nearly all my classmates brought it up, too.)

The answer is what I suspected: It just took a lot longer to apply all the dry pencils without the help of water. He makes many tiny marks to create a nearly Impressionistic result that’s unexpected for colored pencils. Instead of solidly blending layers of color, his approach relies more on optical blending (my term, not his) that evokes pointillism.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable, even relaxing workshop working in a way that I’ve not tried before with very different subject matter than I am likely to encounter in these parts. And I actually like my result (not often true of class projects)!

Pencil notes: In my review of the expanded Derwent Drawing line, I wondered out loud whether the muted, natural color range could suffice as someone’s sole pencil set. With this completely natural landscape as the subject, I still found Drawing’s palette lacking. (One of these days, I’ll get to the post I’ve started making notes for: If I had to give up all colored pencils except a certain limited quantity, let’s say 75, which would I keep? It would be convenient to simply keep 72 Derwent Drawing pencils, but I know that wouldn’t do. Which colors would stay, and which other brands and colors would I add in?)

Paper Review: UglyPads

 

New UglyPads -- glue-bound sheets just right for making sketchbooks!

Way back when I first started using colorful Uglybooks, one of my first thoughts was that I wished they made an edition that included multi-colored pages in one book. I suggested as much to my contact there, and they liked the idea, but they wanted to see how well their then-new product line would go before developing new products. Fair enough.

Now, four years later, it hasn’t happened yet, but the next best thing has: UglyPads! In a 9-by-12-inch size, the glue-bound pads contain the same richly colored, 175 gsm paper as the Uglybooks sketchbooks I love so much. Each pad contains five sheets each of five colors, and four colorways are available.

Juicebox contains most of my favorite midtone colors.

Uglybooks offered to send me one pad of my choice, so I chose Juicebox, which includes most of my favorite Uglybooks colors (the ones that work well as midtones against black and white inks). With much excitement, on the day the pad arrived, I cut a few sheets in half, then folded and stapled them into a 4 ½-by-6-inch book. (Although I have a corner rounder, it’s tedious to use, so I didn’t bother with this first book; perhaps eventually). I’m thrilled to have the multi-colored book I have always wanted!

In addition, the finished size is a smidge larger in each dimension (closer to a true A6) than Uglybooks, which gives me a little more page real estate. Nice!

Finally, the multi-colored Uglybook I have always wanted!

My only complaint is that the glue binding is a bit coarse, so when sheets are removed, the edges end up rough. Although it’s not a deal-breaker, I had to trim off the edges before binding.

Cover sticker by Draplin Design Co.

Even more important than being able to make my dream Uglybook is that this solution resolves a larger issue I’d been worrying about for a while. Despite the large stash I had acquired, I am now running low on the original saddle-stitched (stapled) books I fell in love with. In 2024, much to my initial horror, Uglybooks switched to a perfect binding. To my relief, the binding does open flatter than most perfect-bound notebooks, but it doesn’t stay open (annoying during USk throwdowns). Although I can tolerate them, I have never fully embraced them as a replacement for simple, stapled books.

After my supply of saddle-stitched books runs out, would I be forced to settle for perfect-bound books or – heaven forfend – stop using colored paper!? No! Now that I can staple together my own books using the same beautiful papers, that dilemma has been eliminated. Whew! Another first-world sketcher problem evaded!

Just Like That at Green Lake

 

5/24/26 Green Lake

After walking around Green Lake with a couple of friends, I stayed behind after we parted to make a sketch. Standing just off the path near the water, my presence prompted two conversations. One was with a woman, a watercolor painter herself, who saw from a distance that I seemed to be using a brush, she said, yet she stopped for a closer look because she couldn’t believe I’d be painting standing up! I showed her that I was using water-soluble pencils and crayons, and she thanked me for inspiring her. She seemed eager to get her paints out.

The second conversation was with a couple who seemed astounded. “You just did that standing here? Just like that?” That question again.

I’m always amused. Yes, just like that.

Bob Blast’s Painterly Tips

 

5/21/26 photo reference

Bob Blast’s YouTube channel recently came to my attention. Scanning through his titles, I can see that he is a painter, not a sketcher, but as I always do with painting instruction videos, I try to apply his approach to any medium I might use. That’s how I use oil painter Ian Roberts’ extremely informative videos about composition. It’s usually a little more difficult to use pencils, crayons or markers in place of paint, but I enjoy the challenge of attempting it anyway. And almost always, the exercise reconfirms that basic art and design principles apply to any medium.

In the video I viewed recently, Blast (Bob’s real last name is Burridge, but I like that he uses “Blast”) shows how he designs paintings around figures by putting the highest contrast around the area of the focal point. He also uses negative space to clarify and design shapes. Finally, he stresses the importance of showing the direction of light. His style is more abstract than I would typically use for urban sketching, but its visual appeal made me want to try it.

Using a reference photo I had snapped on a walk, I picked out some primary colors in water-soluble markers and crayons. My color choices were based on values, not the photo, and I grabbed basic hues so that I wouldn’t get distracted by trying to “match” what I saw.

Although this approach is very different from the way I usually think, I like the result. I’m especially pleased with how the dark negative space defines the left figure’s lighted side. (I would have liked the way the high-contrast negative space defines the dog’s lighted side if I hadn’t inadvertently drawn the ground shadows through its body!)

5/23/26 Statue of Lenin, Fremont

Anyway, this exercise was a lot of challenging fun. It motivates me to take more high-contrast reference photos so that I can practice this exercise again. 

Could I ever do it on location? It’s often difficult to find a high-contrast scene with ideal lighting that would make this exercise easier, but now that I’m aware of what to look for, I see more potential. Last week in Fremont, I was thinking about Blast’s tips as I sketched the statue of Lenin. Several dense trees are behind Lenin’s head. I made the tree on the left (the lit side of the statue) darker to have higher contrast against the focal point. On that overcast afternoon, I also exaggerated the contrast between light and shadow on the whole statue and made the direction of light more obvious -- something I became more aware of because of Blast’s videos.